Icebound
by MoonOfPluto
Summary: "I know everybody's fears, Jack. And your fear- your greatest fear- is that you will always be alone, that you will never be believed in. I'm offering you friendship, power, belief.." That one word caught him and the darkness seized its chance. "Come with me, Jack. I will be feared, but that does not mean you can't be loved." The outstretched hand was tempting and Jack took it.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One:

The wind howled around his face; snowflakes whirling in every direction. Some flew straight into his face. It seemed mocking now, like the Man in the Moon had been teasing him all along. Jack Frost biting at your nose. He had been so close to believers, working with the guardians. Helping collect the teeth, decorating eggs in the Warren.. The life of a guardian may not have been for him, but it had been fun for a time. They had accepted him.

Tooth had seen past his white teeth to his memories, Baby Tooth.. Baby Tooth had stayed with him when he was in Pitch's lair under the bed when she could have flown off earlier. North had tried to show him his centre, given him the doll with the big eyes. Sandman.. Jack gulped. He didn't want to think about Sandman now. Maybe if he had been chosen a bit earlier, maybe a year before Pitch.. Maybe he could have had the friendship he wanted. Maybe he could have been chasing yetis around Santa's Workshop and freezing the elves.

Jack pulled the box of teeth from his pocket and examined it. It looked handmade, the sort of thing that he saw Sophie Bennett making in nursery. And there were thousands of those in Pitch's lair, more.. Millions. The amount of work that must be put into each one didn't bear thinking about. It would be like if he chose the design of every single snowflake. Then he would have to spend all of his time like North or Bunny, holed up in one place making all year and releasing only one snowfall each year. Jack nearly smiled at the thought of children waiting desperately for their one snow day. Maybe it would become something like Christmas or Easter. Frost day.

He turned it to the side, trying to find the opening. And his face stared back at him. Not his face now, of course. In all of his three hundred years, he had never lost a tooth. Not even that time that he had crashed head first into a street lamp. No, this face seemed a pale pinkish colour. It had a mischievous grin on its face and brown hair spiked around its ears. Did he once look like that? Could he have been so human once, could he have had a group of friends gathered around like Jamie always did? A family, even?

Jack felt a twinge of pain. He might have had friends once, a family once. Maybe three hundred years ago people would have asked him to watch where he was going if he walked into them, instead of just walking through him. But those times were over. They went when the moon dragged him up from under the ice. From the moment he picked up his staff and started flying and freezing his lake. He was Jack Frost now, immortal. He didn't need that life.

He brought the container up over his head and prepared to throw it into the crevasse. His arm arched over, just like throwing a snowball. Just a forward motion. Simple. But his joints froze as his arm reached over his head. He tried again, but the same happened. Could the Man in the Moon not just leave him to embrace his new life? To have fun alone, to stay here in Antarctica, to freeze away all of the anger and disappointment until all that were left were blizzards?

"I thought this might happen," a soft voice spoke from behind him. Jack recognised the voice. It was the one who had caused all of his problems, the one who had stolen Easter, who had made the guardians abandon him.. "They never really believed in you. I was just trying to show you that." He was chasing the shadows through Pitch's lair, trying to find his teeth and then it had all been too late. "But I understand."

That last sentence crossed the line. Whatever had been holding him back before, preventing him from releasing all of his bottled up frustration out on the atmosphere just snapped like it was nothing. "You don't understand anything!" Jack screamed, spinning around. The staff seemed to act of its own accord, shooting an icy blast at Pitch.

A shield of black sand appeared in front of Pitch and his ice disappeared with it harmlessly. "I don't understand what it's like to be cast out?" he challenged. Jack dodged the swarm of sand that flew toward him like a flock of angry bees. "To not be believed in?"

Jack jumped into the air, crying out in anger and firing another jet of ice at Pitch. The black sand rose once again and there was a mighty blast as they connected. Jack could hear cracking and dust swirled all around him. "To long for.." the voice seemed to be coming from all directions and Jack spun.

As the dust cleared, his eyes fell upon the face of the boogeyman. "A family," he finished, his head down. "All that time in the shadows, I thought that nobody else understood. But now I see that I was wrong." Jack lowered his staff and almost relaxed the grip. "We don't have to be alone Jack. I believe in you, and I know that children will too."

The layer of ice that Jack had built up around his innermost fears and desires was cracking and crumbling. Pitch didn't seem like the sort of man to want a family, but could they be the same? Could Pitch just be hiding what he wanted under black sand and the guise of darkness?

"In me?" he croaked.

"Of course!" the Nightmare King cackled. "What goes together better than cold and darkness? Look at what we can do together! We can make them believe!"

Pitch stepped aside and Jack stared into the structure that had been created when their powers collided and erupted. Long spikes stuck out at odd angles, his own ice.. Familiar ice.. Fused together with Pitch's dark sand. Bound together. It shone in the Antarctic sun and Jack could see his face in the ice, just slightly darker than it was before. Small specks of glittering light shone around it. It seemed like the first magical thing that he had seen. Santa's Workshop and Bunny's Warren were magnificent, but this.. This was unique and magical. This was his.

"We'll give them a world where everything.." Pitch continued, his hands waving enthusiastically, "Everything is.."

"-Pitch Black," Jack finished.

Pitch hesitated for a second, but then resumed. "And Jack Frost, too. They'll believe in both of us."

A world where everything was Pitch Black and Jack Frost. It sounded tempting, he admitted. Jack gazed up at the structure which towered above both of them. His ice and Pitch's nightmare sand. Nightmares. Mummy, it's pitch black in here, he'd heard children say. I'm afraid. It would be a world of fear. Jack may not be a guardian, but he didn't want children to fear. He wanted them to play, to make snowmen and ambush each other with snowballs, to just have fun..

"No. They'll fear both of us. And that's not what I want." Jack turned away from the boogeyman. "Now for the last time, just leave me alone!"

"Are you sure, Jack?" the darkness taunted. "You want to be left alone. I know fear, Jack. I know everybody's fears. And you have few, but your fear- your greatest fear- is to be left alone forever. For nobody to ever see or believe in you. I'm offering friendship, power, belief.."

That one word caught him and the darkness seized its chance.

"Come with me, Jack. I will be feared, but that does not mean that you can't be loved."

The outstretched hand tempted him. It was all so.. How did he know that Pitch was bad? Pitch was offering him a chance to be believed in, to be loved by children. How could that be bad? Pitch wasn't asking that he dress in black and ride nightmares. It was just sharing his power. Jack could still make snowstorms and take Jamie on toboggan rides. Besides, the guardians said that they were good, but they didn't even have time for children. They had turned him away for one mistake, one that wasn't even his fault. They let the eggs get smashed and blamed him for not being there?

Jack shook the hand and a toothy smile curved across Pitch's face. Staring at the golden eyes, grey skin and sharp teeth, Jack couldn't shake the feeling that he was making a deal with the devil. But then he smiled back. And laughed. Pitch was so close to the stereotype of a boogeyman, so unlike the other guardians and what people thought of them. There were no depictions of Santa carrying two sword with tattoos down his arms, or Tooth as a sort of bird-ish thing.

"Well done, Jack. You've made the right choice, I promise you. A neutral party no longer, it seems. Anyway, whilst it would be lovely to stay longer here, we both have work to do. I must introduce you to the nightmares so that they will no longer try to hurt you. You'll need to rid yourself of your fear of them."

"I'm not afraid of your nightmares," Jack protested. "I killed most of them, remember?"

"Painfully well," Pitch replied. "But remember, Jack, I am the Nightmare King. I know all of your fears, and whilst your main fear is being abandoned and alone, there are others. Being trampled by horses which prey on fear is lower on your fear spectrum than on others, perhaps, but it still ranks. And there are far, far more nightmares than you killed, I can guarantee that."

"Where are we going?" Jack asked curiously.

"To my lair." Jack grinned at the word. He'd seen children make mini igloos and call them lairs before on his snow-days. Generally the ones who enjoyed their independence and alone time, like him. Their evil lairs, they'd call them. Jack would have an evil lair of his own soon. Well, not his own. He'd probably be invading Pitch's lair.

"Do you still want those?" Pitch asked, snapping Jack away from thoughts of himself on Pitch's shadow throne, steepling his fingers and cackling madly. "The teeth," Pitch clarified. "You didn't seem to earlier."

Jack had forgotten all about the teeth and his memories. He supposed they didn't matter anymore. He would have believers and his ice power now. He could embrace life as himself now, Jack Frost, not whatever his name was before. He didn't need the teeth, even if he couldn't seem to throw them away. He withdrew the container from his pocket.

"Can you.. Can you throw them away for me?" Jack asked. "I don't know why, I just can't," he rambled. "I tried earlier and then I just froze, pun not intended, and couldn't.."

"Of course, Jack," Pitch cut him off. "We're partners now. If we're going to spend eternity working together, you can feel comfortable about asking me a simple favour."

Jack handed the box over, taking one last look at his old face. The sprite-like face with the grin and the spiky hair. Only human and he was so much more than that now. He may not be a guardian, but he would be one of the most believed in immortals. The big two, him and Pitch. The Nightmare King and.. What could his title be? Everyone had one, but he was just Jack Frost. Frost King was rather unoriginal.

The light shone from the golden container as it arched through the air, finally burying itself in one of the half-frozen arctic lakes. He was no longer reliant on the guardians, he'd severed ties. His teeth from Toothiana. The big-eyed doll from North. Sandy was dead. And Bunny.. Well, that bridge was severed when Bunny had yelled about how they shouldn't have trusted Jack, how it was his fault Easter was lost, how Jack had betrayed them to Pitch.

He wasn't really a traitor if they hadn't properly trusted him in the first place, or accepted him. If what Pitch had said was true. But Pitch could have lied.. No. Pitch was his ally now, Jack reminded himself. No more being a neutral party. A portal of black sand opened up in front of Jack, and he followed Pitch through into the darkness.

xXx-X-xXx

So, what do you think? Pitch is hard to write dialogue for, he almost always seems to be cackling in the movie. But I doubted that Jack would go with him if he went into a laughing fit at his convincing Jack moment. I love Pitch as a villain though, so beautifully manipulative. And am I the only one who found the nightmares cute?

-MoonOfPluto


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two:

The shadows seemed to ebb away slowly as Jack stumbled and fell through the air. Just in time, he called upon his powers and halted his fall around half a metre from the ground. Or what was left of the ground, anyway. The actual floor was not visible underneath all of the teeth containers.

Unwillingly, his brain was filled with memories from when he was last here. Stumbling through the lair blindly whilst Pitch was always one step ahead, tempting him with the teeth, taunting him about his fears. He wondered again whether he had made the right decision to join Pitch. The Nightmare King was seen as evil, after all. But evil was just a word, Pitch hadn't hurt any of the children. Just given them bad dreams.

Jack had never had a nightmare before though. He wondered for a second what it would be like. Would it be the exhilarating type of fear that he got running from Bunny back in 68? Or the horrible type of fear when he was flying towards Sandy with Pitch and the arrow and just being a few seconds slow?

"Jack," he heard Pitch's voice from behind. "Ja-ack," the boogeyman called again. "I need to show you something!" There was a hint of a chuckle and Jack wondered what it could be.

"Coming!" he called. "Don't get your robes in a twist. Sheesh, you're as bad as the kangaroo!"

Jack floated slowly towards the origin of the voice. The wind was weak here, only barely able to support his body. He fluttered up and down before landing lightly in front of Pitch. The Nightmare King's face was centimetres from his, the golden eyes twitching amidst the grey skin that seemed to have no edge, just blurring away into nothing.

"What is it?" Jack asked.

Pitch just smiled and grabbed Jack's wrist, laughing. Jack found himself spinning around next to Pitch, their eyes fixed on the same spot. Jack could feel Pitch's possessive hand gripping his shoulder and a strand of nightmare sand tilting his head upwards.

"Just like the one at the pathetic Pole Workshop," Pitch hissed. "Look at the lights!" he cackled. "Children everywhere have stopped believing!" he shouted in elation and Jack winced. "There are countries with not a single believer! Nobody believes in the guardians in Britain, Germany, Australia.."

"How many left?" Jack asked, torn between awe and fear. This was disturbing, but it was.. Impressive.

"Only twenty," the Nightmare King replied. "Oops," he said, chuckling. "Looks like that's nineteen now.."

Another light flashed out before Jack's eyes and he felt slight regret. He could remember the kids, gathering under the tree at Christmas morning. They had rushed to the windows to see the layer of snow he had given, but that would soon be dwarfed by the gifts under the tree. He hated the way that Santa would steal the attention, but he had loved seeing the children's face light up as they opened the gifts and started having fun, jumping from one to another faster than he could keep track of.

Pitch seemed to realise and the strand of sand tightened around his head. "They'll be our believers soon," he promised. "Every child on the planet will know the name of Pitch Black!" he roared. "And Jack Frost too. The Nightmare King and the Ice Prince.."

"Prince?" Jack asked. "I mean, I'm flattered to be royalty at all of course, but how come you're a king and I'm a prince?"

"Because, Jack, you look like a sixteen year old. You wear a hoodie. You don't look kingly."

"Eighteen now," Jack said. "Pitch, do we have to make them disbelieve in the guardians? Can't they believe in all of us?"

"No.." Pitch said, as if the idea was laughable. "The guardians don't like to share belief. That could have happened in the Dark Ages, when they first came here. But they didn't just get believers of their own. They took mine, they told children that I didn't exist," Pitch said resentfully. "But now it's my time again. And they can't survive without believers.."

"They didn't tell me," Jack said. "You did though," he remembered. "The first time we met. You said that I was a neutral party, so you would ignore me. But then you told me that. It's great being a guardian.."

"But there's a catch," Pitch finished. "When children stop believing, the things you work to protect dwindle. And little by little, so do you."

"Yeah. But wouldn't that mean that I'd become weaker when I became a guardian? I didn't have any believers. Would I have dwindled away and died?"

"Yes," Pitch replied. "Glad you didn't pick their side now?" The strand of nightmare sand around Jack's head loosened and slithered down his cheeks, resting on his shoulders. "They didn't pay attention to the fact that you had no believers.." The sand slid around his neck.

"They would have had me killed," Jack said resentfully. His hand tightened around his staff, coating it with ice. The temperature dropped several degrees and snow started to fall from the underground ceiling. "I need to see them. Show them that they were wrong. That I know more about helping children than they ever have."

"They're at North's Workshop."

"How do you know?"

"I can sense their fear, all the way from here I can sense it."

"Wow. I can't sense where it's snowing automatically," Jack said. "That's pretty cool."

"Indeed. And that's another reason why I am a king and you a prince."

Pitch opened another portal of black sand, a swirling vortex of darkness. He turned his back on Jack and walked through. Jack hurried after him. Pitch felt comfortable with him. He was willing to turn his back, Jack thought. Pitch trusted him, which was more than the guardians had done. The guardians who would have killed him.

Pitch always seemed to come out of his shadow-portals standing up, Jack thought resentfully as he fell onto the floor face first. Another reason that Pitch was a king and him a prince, he supposed. Still, he thought happily, he could run on ice easily enough, but he was sure that freezing the floor under Pitch would make him slip and slide and fall, like they all did.

Jack chuckled at the mental image, before it morphed into another before his eyes. The elves with the shoes, the yetis playing trumpets, the tooth fairies fluttering around, North's book.. What would have been his guardian ceremony. What would have been either his death or his powers leaving him almost completely. Jack would know if he had believers, he was sure. And he didn't. But he would soon enough.

"Jack?" a voice rose. Jack stared around. It was North, leaning on one of his swords. North looked weak, gaunt. His eyes had sunken back, the eyes which were once so wide with wonder. His tattoos of naughty and nice were fading, although the naughty tattoo flared up as he saw Jack. Jack wondered for a second whether it recognised him. Top of the naughty list and all.. But he thought they were past that. Maybe after Pitch.

"Jack, has Pitch hurt you?" North demanded, trying his best to look fierce. Jack couldn't help but laugh at his attempt. "Pitch, if you have hurt another guardian.."

"I'm not a guardian," Jack shouted, banging his staff down to make the floor freeze under them. Ice coated the ceiling which gave a mighty crack. "And Pitch hasn't hurt me. Unlike you. He's actually been honest with me."

"Jack, what are you talking about? What could Pitch have told you? Whatever it is, it's lies, I promise."

Jack raised his staff and spun it, letting the point rest towards Toothiana. She looked even worse than North. With every flap of her wings, feathers coated the ground. Her teeth were even stained yellow. She must be bad, Jack thought, for her most important part to start to decay. He forced a short burst of ice from the staff to her wing joint, causing her to fall from the air.

"Just the fact that you almost killed me, slipped your mind, I suppose? I mean, of course, it's a lie. Seriously, I'm sure the fact that you can barely fly and North can barely walk and Bunny isn't here trying to kill me right now has nothing to do with the fact that you have almost no believers. I'm sure that it's just a natural thing for a Tooth fairy's teeth to start decaying every so often, right?"

"My teeth?" Tooth asked, cradling her jaw. "I mean, that's not important. You need to do what's right for us, what's right for the children. And Pitch is not that choice. Trust me. I don't know what you mean about us almost killing you, we tried to welcome you to the guardians. The Man in the Moon chose you.."

"Frankly, the Man in the Moon can freeze for all I care," Jack responded. "I'm sick and tired of all of this Man in the Moon stuff. You wanted me to help you. You didn't tell me that a guardian without believers is a dead guardian. You tried to make me a guardian, knowing that I would die because I had no believers. Pitch told me that."

"Jack, can't you see that Pitch only wants you for your powers?" Tooth asked. "Look inside yourself. You were chosen for a reason. What did you see in your teeth? Did you find something that you didn't like? Is that why you're doing this?"

"You really don't get it, do you? Pitch is offering me power. You are trying to leech off my powers. And besides, Pitch and I can share our believers. You stole Pitch's believers from him."

"We freed children from a world of fear," North replied. "As was our duty as guardians of childhood. As is your duty. Jack, we do not blame for falling for his lies. He is good liar. But you need to come back to us. Find your centre. Use it. It is not fear," he said sternly, his eyebrows down.

"You aren't needed to protect the children any longer," Jack said. "I don't want to hurt them. But children can use fear. Maybe if they were afraid of falling, they wouldn't walk out onto the ice on frozen ponds when it snows at Christmas. Of course, you couldn't protect them then, could you? It was me. But then they skipped off, telling all of their friends about how Santa must have saved them from falling."

"Jack, stop. Pitch has lied to you if you think he wants to protect children. Fear is not a good thing. The Jack I knew wouldn't think that."

"The Jack you knew is gone."

Jack could feel the blanket of dark sand on his shoulders. He had almost forgotten that Pitch was there with him, he had stayed quiet. Normally the Boogeyman's presence seemed to fill a room, but here he had sunk back into the shadows. But Pitch was had the attention now. And he was smiling down at Jack with pride.

Pitch's laugh filled the room, echoing from the frozen walls.

"Jack, they aren't listening. Perhaps I should explain?"

Jack shrugged. "Would you say anything differently?"

"The Nightmares could do the talking."

"Wait. I want to talk to the kangaroo. Where is he?"

"Behind you, dipstick."

There was a huge noise and smoke filled his face, as all hell broke loose around them.

xXx-X-xXx

I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Next time there should be some Bunny-Jack-Pitch action.. Anyway, if you have criticism or just liked the story, please leave a review. Thanks to the six people who left reviews on the last chapter, you're awesome.

-MoonOfPluto


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three:

The dust from the egg grenade flew into Jack's face as he turned around, ice blasting from his staff. The next grenade came seconds later, shattering his ice and sending icicles flying towards him. Jack ducked under the fragments and jumped up again, calling the wind to carry him.

It was much stronger in here than it was in Pitch's lair, he thought fleetingly, as he dodged a boomerang. Rolling over in the sky, he noticed the thrown sword seconds too late. There was a sharp moment of panic as Jack watched it getting closer and closer as his limbs moved all too slowly.

Just as it was about to slice into the hand holding the staff, there was a flurry of darkness. The black sand wrapped around the sword, halting it centimetres from his skin. Suddenly, his frost coated the sand, cushioning the sword further. One of North's, Jack noticed, glancing at the hilt as the blade fell.

The dark ice shattered as it hit the ground, sending chips out. The sword itself was unharmed though, and Jack dived for it. Tooth was there first. The tired, wings-falling-apart Toothiana he had seen minutes ago was just a memory now. The edge of her wing caught him in the face as his hand reached for the hilt.

There was a slash of pain; it felt wet too. Blood, Jack thought, raising his hand to his cheek. He'd seen Tooth threaten people before, he'd seen her grab one of Bunny's boomerangs to throw at Pitch if he didn't return her fairies. She had actually thrown it, as well, though it missed. It still semi-shocked him that Tooth would actually hurt somebody, and somebody who looked so much like a child at that.

Tooth's foot slipped under the sword and flipped it up into her hand. It looked unbalanced there, too large, not elegant enough. If he had picked Tooth as the type to wield a sword, it would probably be a rapier. She swung it at him with surprising fluency and speed and Jack instinctively stepped back.

"I don't want to hurt you, Jack. Just give up, come back to us. Without your help, we can't beat Pitch. Look.."

Jack twisted his head around towards Pitch, who had Bunny pinned against a wall with his sand whilst nightmares chased North. The sand started to reach for Bunny's neck. Jack watched for a moment as Bunny started to gasp and choke. Was it really so easy to kill a guardian, he wondered morbidly. He hadn't even known that you could kill them until Sandy.

The sword bit into his hand and he almost dropped the staff. Shouldn't have let your guard down, Jack, he reminded himself.

"Listen to me, Jack," Tooth screeched. "Stop watching it like it's something to be proud of. It'll be over soon," she said, proudly. "North sent all of his elves and yetis out to the children when he saw you with Pitch. Baby Tooth has been flying around ever since Pitch released her in the Arctic. We're protecting children and more of them are believing in us. We're getting stronger.. If it's power you want, just come back to us. Anything but him."

"He's a person, not a thing," Jack retorted, coating the blade with ice to make it heavy and blunt. "Is every spirit who isn't a guardian just an object to you? I bet he was moaning to you all when I was chosen, no, not Jack Frost, he's a menace, he ruined Easter, blizzard of '68 and all that.. Is that why you never spoke to me?"

"Jack, Pitch always ignored you as well, until you became of use to him. He said it himself, don't you remember? I'm going to ignore you, but then, you must be used to that.. At least we didn't taunt you about it."

"No, you just tried to kill me," Jack replied. "So much better. That was a reference to you, as well. You must be used to that. I was. For three hundred years, and when you finally try to talk to me, it's first to attack me after the blizzard of '68, then to attack me and shove me in a sack through a magic portal and then to kill me."

"That was Bunny when he was angry, he's nice most of the time," Tooth defended. "Like when you were racing to find the teeth with us, didn't you like that? You can have that feeling again. I can find your teeth."

"I don't want my teeth. I threw them over a lake in Antarctica. And now I'm angry, so I feel very much in the mood to watch you fall. Especially Bunnymund."

Jack looked back again, to see Pitch pressed up closer to Bunny, the nightmare sand coiled around his throat. The gasps and struggles were becoming weaker. He felt slightly guilty, remembering Bunny in his good moments, but then the bad came back. The beating Bunny had given him after '68. Bunny telling the others that he had to go, and Bunny watching happily as North arranged to have him killed.

Suddenly, pain filled his entire body. The staff dropped from his hand and blood spurted and oozed over his skin. The sword that Tooth had been using was dug into his wrist and he screamed. His screams filled the chamber, causing Pitch to turn away from Bunny, one hand keeping the strangling up and the other balling up sand to throw.

"Let him go, Pitch, or I swear to you I will slit his throat!" Tooth called piercingly, the sword being drawn out from his arm and up to his neck. "We will forgive this, all of this, if you leave now and don't return. I'll let Jack go too."

Jack's hand was hanging halfway off, and the pain was getting too much to handle. He needed help, he needed his staff, or for Pitch to attack or even give in. Pitch wouldn't give in though, and he didn't want to him to. Pitch must know that it was his staff that gave him his powers. Jack just hoped that Toothiana wouldn't make good on her threat after trying to convince him so desperately.

"Have him," Pitch said, with a shrug.

What? No, no, that wasn't supposed to happen. Jack wanted to scream in pain and frustration and betrayal now, Pitch was supposed to be his ally, supposed to make some effort to help. Tooth seemed to think the same thing because her sword lowered inch by inch until it was at her side.

"You see, Jack? He.."

The sand came from nowhere, crushing Tooth's wrist and snatching the sword from her grasp. Her arm was frozen in the upwards motion and Jack realised that this time, she would have killed him. Her arm still struggled up.

"He's intelligent enough to wait for the right time," Pitch finished. "To use your emotions against you, intelligent enough not to risk his ally and friend in a risky gesture. I won't betray you, Jack, do you think so little of me?" Pitch laughed, the strand of sand around Toothiana's wrist flinging her into a wall. A loud crack signalled that she had broken something.

Jack audibly sighed in relief. Of course, Pitch wouldn't betray him, not after he had bothered to come to Antarctica for him, to tell him the truth when the guardians told lies, not after he had offered him believers and not after he had saved Jack's life with the sword. It was all a matter of timing and planning.

Jack fluttered to the ground on the sand, holding his wrist gash in one hand. He glanced around the room to find his staff, his eyes freezing on it at the corner of the room. He flicked it upwards and caught it in his good hand, applying a numbing layer of ice to his wound, sealing it up. His eyes fixed on the floor next to it though.

Amid the nightmare sand and the melting ice, was a small flower. A flower indoors and Bunnymund was missing. That could only mean one thing. Bunny had escaped through his blasted tunnels that made Jack feel motion sick travelling through them. He could be anywhere now.

"The Kangaroo escaped," Jack reported, flying towards Pitch. "Where's North?"

"Gone as well," Pitch said, strangely calm. "He must have taken the sleigh. My nightmares are chasing him and I don't know how fast that rickety thing can go. He will probably be caught soon. It's the Easter Bunny that's more of a threat. I should not have let him go. But no matter, you are more important than he is, and we have the fairy."

Threads of sand made their way over to Toothiana's damaged frame, curling around her body and dragging her closer to them. The sand solidified into a table and Jack added some ice to give it more structure. Bands of sand fixed around Tooth's arms, legs, wing joints and across the wings. Jack could understand that. He traced some ice along the cut she had given to his face with her wing.

"Bait," Pitch muttered. "We'll have the other guardians here soon enough. They're loyal enough to each other, if not to outsiders." Jack hesitated over his words. Outsiders. That's what he was to the guardians, that's what he always had been. He wasn't one of them. But he had that kind of loyalty now, with Pitch. Just of a more intelligent, less blindly emotional variety.

"No, you won't," Tooth stammered, her voice weak from the pain of a broken wing. "I'll go into Baby Tooth, I'll tell them not to come after me."

"They won't listen," Pitch snarled. "They hate us far to much to leave one of their own here to suffer. Besides that, it won't work if they think I've killed you. Go. Control your pesky fairy and send a message to the others. Tell them that I have you here, tell them that I'm keeping you with the nightmares."

Pitch's face relaxed and took on a more ecstatic look. "Your fear is so sweet, Toothiana. For over a thousand years, I've been waiting for this moment. And you won't need to lie." Jack saw Tooth's face twinge into an expression that seemed much worse than her pain, this was pure terror.

"No.." she murmured. "No, no. Anything but that and harming the others or children. You can torture me. I'm sure you'll enjoy that. You're sadistic, and here I am, captured and alone."

Jack stared at her in surprise and slight disgust. This was pathetic, her shrill voice echoing through the hall with her pleading. She looked up at him, as if expecting pity, and he just looked away. Pitch seemed to have the same feelings about her feeble attempts to avoid the nightmares as him.

"Oh no, Toothiana, where would the fun be in that? I'm not a common thug, I'm not going to hurt you. Your death will be a happy occasion, but I won't torture you. Physically, that is.. Mentally, on the other hand.. Now that is an art. One which you will find that I am exceptionally proficient in."

Pitch laughed, as the sand of nightmares oozed from his fingers, forming smaller horse and thin webs over Tooth's skin. Her face twisted in horror and her eyes closed. Jack even found himself feeling a twinge of guilty pleasure at this, although considering that she had nearly cut off his hand and tried to kill him twice now, he supposed it shouldn't really be a guilty pleasure.

xXx-X-xXx

Thanks for all of the reviews, and the follows and favourites as well. They're wonderful to read. And to the person who asked, no, this will not be BlackIce. I don't write anything sexual and romance is more of a motivation in my stories than a focus, and even then it comes from a very strong friendship (my Hunger Games fanfictions). Also the fact that Pitch is at least three times Jack's age.. I hope you still enjoy though. And they will probably be friends and might just end up ruling the world together.. You'll just have to wait and see. :)

-MoonOfPluto


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four:

Jack turned away from Toothiana, who was screaming, writhing and shouting out names. Vaguely, he wondered who these people were. Haroom and Rashmi and Punjam Hy Loo. If they were people at all, that was. They could be places or just random words that sounded like names. Pitch seemed to know. Jack didn't want to. If it was bad enough to make the tough fairy queen who had nearly slit his throat minutes ago sob like a baby.. He couldn't even think what would do that.

Jack flinched as he felt a hand on his arm, over the wound Tooth had given him. He looked up to see Pitch's golden eyes with the flickering shadows staring down at him. He needed to stop being so suspicious of Pitch. Pitch had saved his life, twice before in the past half hour. He knew that Pitch had killed Sandy, but they had a history, it seemed. And Sandy, the little sand man who enjoyed sleeping and made those funny symbols above his head seemed to be the one in the wrong. The one who stole all of Pitch's believers. If Pitch was to be believed. He was.

"Let me see that, Jack," Pitch ordered, his voice gentle, but with a steely undertone. "We may be immortal, as in we won't die of old age, but we can still be killed or seriously injured."

"Sandy," Jack muttered. He thawed the ice over the cut. "There. How bad is it?"

"You won't die," Pitch said, his teeth bared in a smile. "You won't lose the hand either. Accelerated healing, it happens to immortals. Lucky really, considering the situations that you get yourself into. Blizzard of 1968. Look at that, it's healing up already." A tendril of black sand prodded at the blood, pushing it back into the wound and following it in.

"The ice helps," Jack said. "It stops it hurting. Are you done?" Pitch gave a curt nod and Jack reapplied the seal of ice and flexed his hand experimentally. It was still stiff and hurt a little, but was much better than before. Jack marvelled at his power. That was a cut that a mortal would probably have bled to death from, and a few minutes later, here he was thinking that it hurt a little. He started to wonder about the arrow that Pitch had shot Sandy in the back with.

"More children are believing in them," Pitch spat, looking at North's globe. The few lights that had been there before, around fifteen, had multiplied rapidly and their were now a couple of hundred. Jack cursed the yetis in his mind. First they had prevented him from breaking in here, then tossed him into the sack and thrown him through the snow globe portal and now they were converting children back to believing in the guardians.

"How did you stop them from believing in the first place?" Jack asked curiously. "Aside from stopping Easter, and wouldn't the kids still believe in Santa and Sandy and Tooth?"

"They already had doubts about Toothiana," Pitch responded. "After she had missed her night of tooth-collecting. You and the guardians managed to clean that up fairly well, but the doubts stayed. When Easter went, their belief in all of the other guardians went too. After all, if the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny aren't real, why would Santa Claus and the Sandman be? Sanderson had been doing a terrible job of keeping my nightmares away.."

"So the guardians still have an opportunity to win the children back with Christmas?"

"Jack, Christmas is just over eight months away." Pitch's laughter echoed throughout the room. "The guardians will be long gone before then. And with all of the yetis occupied with trying to keep children believing in magic.. Well, there would be no presents even if North was alive."

Jack smiled. Maybe he could take over December 25th as a universal snow-day. Everything would freeze, and he could make frost sculptures in all of the towns- maybe with Pitch's sand as well?- and people would be talking about him all through November and December. On the other hand, was there much point in making a universal snow-day on a day without school? Jack laughed quietly.

"How will you know when Tooth has sent the message?" Jack asked. "Shouldn't you make her do that now?"

"Let the nightmare take its course," Pitch said, rubbing his hands together in obvious joy at the look of fear and sadness on Tooth's unconscious face. "It wouldn't be right to stop it halfway through."

Jack looked down at the shapes. He could make out a cage with a fairy inside it. Tooth? Or one of her helpers? Whoever it was, it was definitely a big part of her nightmare. Jack smiled slightly. He could see what Pitch meant by fear being a wonderful feeling. He hadn't wanted to be feared, he'd said to Pitch before. But no one ever had feared him, not really. Maybe it was just because it was one of the guardians. This feeling just seemed out of place for him. He was getting too much like Pitch. Ice, Jack reminded himself. My zone is ice, not nightmares.

"You're enjoying this," Pitch stated slowly, his tongue licking up against his pointed teeth. "I can tell. She isn't the only one here who's afraid."

"So what?" Jack responded. "You're enjoying it too. It was your idea."

"Yes," Pitch said. "I am the Nightmare King. I enjoy fear, I feed off it. I don't feel bad about that. You, on the other hand, are nervous about the idea that you're enjoying being feared. Ice, not nightmares, you're thinking to yourself. Relax, Jack. It's natural to enjoy a bit of fear, it doesn't mean that you're evil. Besides, she tried to kill you. I would be worried if you weren't enjoying this."

"How did you know what I was thinking?"

"I know your fears. You're afraid that you've chosen the wrong choice, that you're going evil, that you're too much like me. That isn't such a bad thing, Jack. We're more alike than you realise. We've both been alone for thousands of years, we've both been living in the shadows of the guardians. Our powers are both unpopular, fear and cold. We're going to rule together, Jack. You can enjoy being feared."

"It's just for Tooth," Jack insisted. "I won't enjoy the fear of children, no matter what you say or do."

"Of course not, Jack," Pitch said, the nightmare sand gathering around him as he laughed. "She'll be pleased with you."

Jack looked down to see Toothiana's eyes flickering open and shut. She was waking up from the nightmare. Seeing her so weak and so terrified had been nice, but it was still a relief when she woke up. He wasn't getting into fear like Pitch was. Just slight sadism, normal for somebody who tried to kill him.

"You're going to send the message to the guardians," Pitch ordered, the sand swirling around him before rising up threateningly. "You will sound oh-so-terrified and desperate for them to come and rescue you. You will tell them that I've been keeping you with the nightmares, and that this is your only chance." The black sand pulsed outwards. "Or I'll place you back with the nightmares."

"How do I know that you won't do that anyway?" Tooth demanded.

"You can't.." Pitch seemed to rise, larger than life, towering over the captive fairy. "I would give my word, but you don't trust me enough for it to be worth anything to you." He laughed. "Remember, I will know if you've done it. And if you don't, it will be worse than nightmares. I have almost ever single one of your fairies trapped. Perhaps I should bring some here. Perhaps if you don't do as I say, they might never end up flying again."

"You wouldn't."

"Oh, trust me, I would," Pitch laughed. "Would you like a demonstration, maybe?"

"I'll go," Tooth said, hurriedly.

Jack watched with interest as Toothiana closed her eyes. Her facial muscles seemed to relax as she left her body. She'd never told him that she could control her fairies. He wondered what other secrets she had. The ability to use swords, a past that made her prepared to betray her fellow guardians rather than relive it, the ability to control her mini-fairies..

Pitch's hand closed around Jack's shoulder and steered him around until they stood face to face. Jack looked to Pitch's other hand; black sand was forming and hardening. The shape that it made was hard to make out for a second, but then it became clear. A bow, like he had with Sandy.

"You must distract the guardians when they come, Jack," Pitch commanded. "Make it a big distraction. Pretend you're going back to their side. But you need to be aware. Shield yourself." Pitch laughed. "I would hate to hit you instead of them."

"How do I shield myself? I can only throw up the ice if I actually know what's coming. Not if you're going to shoot me from behind." Jack looked pointedly at the bow. "I know that it's efficient and all, but I actually quite enjoy living."

"You can make your ice into armour, can't you Frost?" Pitch's long fingers touched the top of Jack's back, where his ice hugged the hoodie. "Make some ice armour. And you wouldn't die if I hit you. You would just become part of my army, part of the nightmares. They take over you."

"Being reborn as a horse that gives bad dreams," Jack said shrugging. "It wasn't my plan when I joined you."

"Pity. I think you'd make a wonderful nightmare. Now make the armour, before they burst through here trying to rescue her."

Jack concentrated hard. Just his torso area, his arms and legs should be fine. The arrow which killed Sandy had been right where the heart would be, if Sandy had one. Jack imagined a little heart made from sand pulsing inside Sandy's body, sending waves of more sand through his veins.

The ice covered his back and stomach in thin layers which should be able to bend over each other, if he'd done it right. Jack was used to creating frost patterns and snowfall, not intricate and practical armour. He tried to bend over and heard warning creaks of the ice grinding. He tweaked the design slightly to make the pieces slide over each other better. It wasn't as flexible as his regular clothes, but he could bend slightly and move easily.

"Will this hold against an arrow?" Jack asked.

"Ice alone probably won't. But ice fused with nightmares should."

Jack pulled off the hoodie, leaving only the almost opaque, ice armour. "Go on." The sand began to feed into the ice in tendrils, spreading like a spiders web. The strands reached around to his back and rejoined the front ones in a circle, before they started to dissolve.

Something that Jack had thought earlier in Antarctica came back to him. It's alright, just an alliance. He isn't getting you to dress in black and ride nightmares or anything. And now, less than a day later, here he stood in black armour. Perhaps riding a nightmare wouldn't be a bad experience.

A hate-filled voice broke him away from his thoughts.

"They know," Tooth stated. "They're coming."

xXx-X-xXx

Wow, I've had lots of reviews, follows and favourites in a pretty short amount of time. Thanks guys. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, even if there's a bit less action than there was last chapter.

-MoonOfPluto


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five:

The wind carried Jack lightly to the floor in front of the sleigh entrance. The armour was light, but even the bit of extra weight it gave caused him to hit the floor less gracefully than he normally would have. He glanced at his feet. If he had taken the guardians's offer, not only would he be dead, but he would be dead and wearing shoes. After Tooth threatening him with the sword, he wasn't sure that they would be merciful enough to let his feet be free for however many years it took for his body to rot. Did immortals rot? He'd have to ask Pitch.

Why was he assuming that Pitch would know that, though? The nightmare sand taking over something looked a bit like decay, he supposed. Maybe if Pitch needed to torture Toothiana again, he could make his sand take over one of her teeth. He remembered her face when he told her they were rotting. They weren't anymore because of the believers returning, but they would be again soon. Soon his believers would come, and the children could enter a new era of belief.

His hand twisted under his hoodie to the armour he had made. The feeling of ice to the touch was smooth and familiar and had memories of his three hundred years as an invisible spirit. There were some very good times then, taking the children on snow rides or experimenting with his powers by the pond. He should have tried to make ice armour long before now, but he had been more focused with making a copy of Santa's sleigh. It didn't fly though, ice reindeer couldn't move. Creating life was beyond Jack's ability as a simple winter spirit.

He could sense Pitch above him somewhere, holding the bow with the shadow arrow that would kill the guardians. Or him if the ice and nightmare armour didn't hold up. It was only forged a few minutes ago and Pitch only learned that it existed earlier that day. Perhaps he shouldn't be so confident that it would stop the arrow from hitting him. Jack imagined what it would be like to be a nightmare. It wouldn't be too bad. He'd be able to fly, and scare children, and that would be fun.. Wait what?

Where did that thought come from? It would not be fun to scare children, if it wasn't in the adrenaline rush of going onto a road on a speeding sled way. Kids loved that, even if they were afraid. But he'd never seen a kid wake up after a nightmare and go to sleep wanting another, even if they were useful. He'd been spending too much time with Pitch, to think that it would be fun to spread fear. That was a job for Pitch, he was the sadist. He could do the good of giving children fear without the bad of wanting to shake them awake every time he gave a nightmare.

The sound of ice shattering broke his thought train, as one huge reindeer touched down. Its hoof smashed through a thin layer of ice and it began to sniff crazily at Jack. Another one was behind it, and strained against the harness. The reindeer sniffing him seemed to remember that it had a job to do and pulled as well, taking its moist, red nose out of Jack's face. Rudolph. He backed up against the wall as more reindeer crowded into the space.

Finally, the tip of the sleigh came in. The seven reindeer pulled it up and over, clearly having some trouble. With a crash, the full sleigh touched down and Jack realised what it was. The sleigh was filled with yeti, he thought he saw Phil in there somewhere. There were around ten yeti in the sleigh, and then a few more hanging off the edges. A discreet rescue party, but maybe stealth wasn't what they were going for.

North jumped out of the sleigh, his belly wobbling, followed by Bunnymund (who was clutching a boomerang in each hand and looked, for lack of a better word, pissed). Jack waited for them to see him, and it didn't take long. Bunny was first.

"It's that little traitor!" Bunny shouted.

One of the boomerangs was flung from his paw, which Jack dodged, right into the second one. It knocked Jack off his feet and he fell face-first into the ice. North was on top of him immediately, and quite literally. The fat man's belly felt even fatter when it was planted firmly on Jack's back. A sword pricked the back of his neck.

"Where is Tooth?" he asked solemnly, prodding Jack with the flat of the blade.

"In there," Jack told him, trying and failing to gesture. "Pitch has her. He said he wouldn't hurt anyone if I joined him, unless you fought first. But then when he had her he started putting her in the nightmares, and using his shadow-scythe to cut her. I tried to stop him, but he told me that he didn't need me anymore and that I'm lucky he let me live, and we need to stop him!"

Jack felt the weight lift from his back and his muscles groaned as North pulled him up. North had his wrist tightly grasped and looked into his eyes. For a moment, Jack thought that North had seen through his act and was going to kill him, or use him against Pitch. But then he pulled Jack forward into a hug. Jack's face hit Santa's chest hard and Santa shook him.

"I knew you were good," he said. "I tell Bunny, the child is misguided, Pitch has lied to him. But Bunny didn't believe me, and I told him, I feel it in my belly. Now we've got to rescue Tooth.."

As he released Jack, Jack stared in horror. The head of a black arrow stuck out from North's stomach. Pitch had shot him in the back, just like he said he would. North looked at Jack, then down at the arrow, then back up at Jack. "You tried, Jack. You're a guardian, you always were. Protect the children for me."

Jack backed away on the balls of his feet as the yetis crowded their master. He wasn't sure what to tell Santa. Should he confess that it was all a trick? And where was Bunny? Was Pitch still watching?

He got the answer to that question quite quickly. Shadows seemed to seep from the walls and ice, forming the figure of the Nightmare King on the back of one of his horses. The bow he held was relaxed and there was no arrow in it anymore. The nightmare trotted around to Jack. Pitch jumped off and nonchalantly put his arm around Jack's shoulders.

"That's my boy," he said, directing Jack's head to North's body, still squirming on the ground. "Do you see, North? He isn't a guardian. And he never was. Jack has always been destined to join me. He will rule by my side. After all, what goes together better than cold and darkness?"

North looked betrayed. Even in such a sorry state as he was, he still managed to convey his disappointment. Jack remembered the look of happiness on his face when he thought that Jack was coming back to his side; a strong contrast to the look of rage, disappointment and sadness he wore now. The nice tattoo was fading fast, but the naughty one had become a stark black against North's skin.

"The children believe," North insisted stubbornly. "They will fight you. And as long as children believe, all hope is not lost. A guardian only truly dies when there are no children who believe in him. And Jack.. Fight for the children. Don't let Pitch twist you like he has been twisted."

At that, Pitch only laughed. His nightmares took it as a signal and closed in on the dying guardian. Jack felt a surge of power at the pure fear and helplessness of North at that moment, as Pitch clutched his shoulder tighter, forcing him to step forward with him and stand over North as his eyes closed.

"Watch him die, feel his fear and know that this is no less than he deserves!" Pitch crowed. Then he abruptly stopped cackling and returned to business mode. "Jack, pick up your staff. We need to find Bunnymund. He should be trying to break her shackles now, that is, if he's got through the nightmares.."

His staff. Jack had dropped it when North had sat on it. Surely it was still here somewhere.. Jack looked around frantically for the source of his power. Bunnymund could have taken it, or it could have fallen off the mountain, or maybe Bunny snapped it... No, he would know if it was broken.

"Jack!" Pitch called impatiently, from the back of a nightmare. "Find your staff. We have guardians to destroy." Then he paused. "Wait. You're afraid. You're afraid of being powerless. Where is your staff?"

"It's not here!" Jack replied desperately. "Bunny must have taken it with him. I need to find it, but I can't fight Bunny without it, I'm just a regular kid without it!"

"We can get it back," Pitch said, shrugging. "It's just a little thing, really. The power comes from you, not from a stick. Take a nightmare for now."

One of the nightmares nuzzled Jack, and he shuddered expecting to feel fear. But he didn't. There seemed to be some sort of kinship, maybe because he was an ally of Pitch. The nightmares slipped its head between his legs and reared up, forcing him to slide backwards onto its back. Jack grasped at the strands that seemed to be part of a mane as it galloped forward. This wasn't too bad, he supposed, but riding the wind felt infinitely more natural.

He isn't getting you to dress in black and ride nightmares or anything. And yet here he was, dressed in black and riding a nightmare on his way into the North Pole to kill the guardians. If somebody had told him a week ago that he was going to be subject of recruitment and murder attempts from the guardians and the King of Nightmares, and that he would end up terrorising the guardians with Pitch.. And that it would feel so good.. Well, he probably would have been glad for the company, but he definitely wouldn't have believed them.

Pitch was right, he saw as they entered the main hall. Bunny was standing over Tooth, trying to pull away at the bars of a sand-cage that Pitch had made. Each time he touched one, he whimpered and weakened. Jack realised that the sand must be giving Bunny nightmares every time he touched it. That was a wonderful plan to keep him occupied by Pitch, Jack thought.

Bunny pulled away from the cage, dropping one of the bars on the floor. It dissipated into black sand and slid back towards Pitch. Then Jack heard a familiar twang and saw something dark fly through the air. Another shadow arrow, another dead guardian. But Jack saw Bunny's ear twitch and knew that the rabbit had heard it too.

Faster than Jack had thought possible from such a big creature, Bunny flung himself to the ground and came up holding Jack's staff in both paws across his chest.

"Try that again, and the staff breaks," Bunny threatened. "Now let us go, and I'll give it back to you."

Jack looked at Pitch, waiting for him to do something. Another arrow was in his crossbow, trained on Bunnymund's heart. But if he shot it, his staff would break and Jack would lose all of his powers. Jack remembered Pitch lying to trick Tooth when she was threatening him. Could he do the same?

"It's just a stick," he said, shrugging as casually as he could. "Break it if you like, the source of my power is me."

His heart pounded inside his chest and Pitch had an odd expression of elation on his face. Jack realised after a moment that it was because of his fear. If he wasn't in such a difficult situation, he would have glared at Pitch for that. As it was, he kept his eyes trained on Bunny.

The sound of the crossbow releasing an arrow surprised him and he wondered for a fleeting second whether it would hurt when his staff broke. The arrow split the air cleanly in the path to Bunny's chest. But the sound that it made was not the sound of an arrow piercing flesh, a sound which Jack had become accustomed to in the past few days.

No, the arrow had pierced wood. The wood of Jack's staff, to be precise. Bunny had thrown the staff in front of him, blocking the arrow, which was now embedded in the centre of his staff. Jack spurred his nightmare forward and caught it as it fell, revelling in the feel of the familiar shepherd's crook that had been his companion since before he could remember.

Jack looked around for Pitch to ask if he could take the arrow out of his staff, but Pitch was busy with his own problem. Jack jumped from the nightmare and flew over.

Pitch's nightmare had Bunnymund suspended by his white bob-tail over an open rabbit-hole. Bunny just smiled, slowly and triumphantly. Suddenly, he kicked the nightmare in the face with one of his massive rabbit paws. The nightmare gave something that was close to a human scream and dropped the writhing guardian straight into the hole, which closed up behind him.

"He'll be back," Pitch said ominously, turning to Jack. "He forgot his friend."

xXx-X-xXx

Sorry if this chapter is a bit late, I hope the content of it made up. No, there isn't a picture of Jack's armour by the way, I can't draw (at all), it's just something I visualised in my head. Anyway, thanks for all of the follows, reviews and favourites, and feel free to give any praise or criticism on this chapter.

-MoonOfPluto


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six:

Nightmare sand crawled over the flower left by Bunny's escape and Pitch growled. Jack looked on in, dare he say it, fear. Pitch's temper hadn't proven to be a good thing in the past, but Jack was Pitch's ally, it was different now. He hoped, anyway. They had managed to kill North at least, so the plan wasn't a total failure.

"Um, Pitch?" Jack asked finally, holding his staff gingerly in front of him. "Do you know what this arrow does? I mean, can I just pull it out?"

"You expect me to know," Pitch said, baring his teeth. "The fact is, I created these arrows just fifty years ago. I've never experimented by having one pierce a winter spirit's source of power before. You realise that you are quite the rarity, not having your powers come from within. Yes, I knew you were lying to the Kangaroo."

"You don't know? I would think that fifty years would be more than enough time to experiment to your heart's content with those. That's around one sixth of my life you're talking about there." Jack sighed. "I suppose I should take it out, right?"

"Oh no. Give it a try while the arrow's in. I'm quite curious now." The nightmare sand reared up and caressed the staff. Suddenly, it snatched the staff from Jack's hands and returned it to Pitch, who closely examined it. Jack felt a protective urge kick in. He'd already been separated from his staff once today, he didn't want to try that again. "Right through the middle," Pitch said casually, tossing the staff back to Jack.

Jack snatched it from the air and pointed at North's old-fashioned windows. He flicked the staff, entering that familiar state of mind where he created ice and let it loose. The result was not as expected. The arrow shattered into pieces to small to count, as the ice poured through it.

Black ice burst from his staff, hitting the window with enough force to break through the ancient panes of glass. It didn't stop there though, it consumed the fragments of glass. First it covered them, like the magnetic putty that he'd seen kids play with. It just oozed over the glass, then began to melt until there was just a pool of sludge left. No glass though.

"Ah. Your ice doesn't normally melt that quickly," Pitch stated. "Does it?" His lips quirked upwards in a smile. "The snowfall from the blizzard of 1968 lasted for almost a week. I remember feeding on Cottontail's fear as he worried that nobody would find his eggs underneath it all."

Jack almost smiled at that memory. He hadn't meant for the blizzard to be on Easter Sunday, but seriously, that date changed every year! How was he supposed to keep track of it? Bunny had then laid down the rules that there must be no snow in heavily populated areas or countries where it would be unusual in the months of March and April. Jack hadn't exactly kept to those rules, but he'd kept the snow pretty light.

"My ice also doesn't consume objects and literally make them disappear," Jack replied. "Shatter them, yes, consume them, no. What was in that arrow?"

"Nightmares," Pitch replied. "That's one of my nightmare horses, placed into an inanimate form. Nightmares can consume people, fear can consume them. You saw what happened to Sandman, didn't you? That's what your ice does now, I believe."

"Is that.. Bad? Can it still freeze things?" Jack was beginning to get afraid now. Yes, he had already crossed the line of dressing in black and riding nightmares, but that wasn't the way he had expected it to be. He didn't want his ice to stop freezing things and consume them instead. Then he would never be loved by believers, only feared. And that still wasn't what he wanted, although there was some satisfaction in fear.

"One again, Jack, I have no idea. It's your power, after all. Try without the arrow. Feel free to keep fearing though." Pitch's tongue darted over his sharp teeth. "It does taste good."

Yes. Yes, that's what he should be doing instead of panicking. Experimenting. He wouldn't give Pitch his fear any longer. Jack took a moment to compose himself and flicked the staff again. The ice that came out was still dark, to Jack's disappointment, but at least it didn't start eating away at the wall this time. It stayed frozen.

Jack walked over to the ice and touched it. Almost immediately, he was overcome by a strong sense of fear and demand to run. He stumbled backwards, away. That was what his ice did? It created fear? Or channeled Pitch's fear? This was bad, kids couldn't have fun with fear ice.

"It creates fear." The words rushed out of Jack's mouth. "My ice creates fear now. I don't like it. I don't want to be feared. I want to it go back to normal.."

"But you like fear, Jack.. I can tell, you enjoyed watching Toothiana being consumed by nightmares. You liked watching North die as well. This is a new power, one you can exploit."

"No, this is a replacement," Jack replied. "I liked their fear, but they deserved it. It's different to go around terrorising kids. I don't like that."

"When have you ever tried?" Pitch asked.

Jack didn't like the look of the smile on Pitch's face. That was the sort of expression that promised that his definition of happiness would guarantee everybody else's worst nightmares coming true. He knew what Pitch was suggesting, but this was going against what he had wanted when he first joined Pitch. The guardians would be gone, yes, he would be believed in and seen.. But he would be feared. No.. They would fear both of us.. And that's not what I want.

"I haven't."

"I beg to differ. You want children to have fun, don't you? One of my nightmares saw you with Jamie Bennett a few days ago. His fear was some of the strongest to come out of a child for quite a long time. You took him into a road on a sled ride, you almost killed him. And the reason that you enjoyed it was the fear, was it not? The high stakes in going wrong? You didn't want to kill a child, of course not, but what makes such things enjoyable is the child's fear, and the adrenaline coming from them. Fun and fear go together like cold and darkness."

Jack had almost forgotten about Jamie Bennett. It seemed a world away now, the times when what he did didn't really matter, when nobody saw him and he would have fun interacting with children like that. Could the reason he enjoyed that be fear? He thought about the other things he had done.. That was the best part of the day, no doubt. Bringing the snow gave the kids joy, but that touch of fear from Jaime made him feel ecstatic. Jaime liked it too.

"I guess," Jack said unsurely. "But that doesn't mean I want to go around giving nightmares. That's your thing, not mine. I want my old powers back."

"Jack, I don't think you understand the joy of a child's fear, not properly. What you gave to Jamie Bennett, what I give to children around the world.. It is one and the same. Come, I will show you.."

Pitch's hand was stretched out to him again, as it had been in Antarctica when they had become allies. Pitch had not lied to him, Jack thought, and he'd had the chance to. But no need to, the guardians had tried to kill him. He didn't need more motivation than that, and if they were Pitch's enemies, and they were his enemy, Pitch was his friend. He could do this, go with Pitch, experiment with fear. It would be his life now, if the ice powers didn't come back.

"What about Tooth?" he asked, feebly stalling.

"Freeze her," Pitch said. "Create a layer of ice over her prison. If the rabbit comes back, he won't be able to get through layers and layers of fear. And even if he does.." Pitch gestured around the room with his hand and black sand seeped in from the walls, the floor, every nook and cranny and solidified into dark horses with golden eyes and ragged manes. Nightmares. "They will take care of it."

"Alright," Jack said. He shouldn't have expected his attempt to stall to come to anything. And besides, he had told himself this was fine. Pitch was his ally, fear might be his life from now on. And it was all Bunnymund's fault. His hands tightened around the staff, in anger. "Where will we go?"

Jack caught Pitch looking at the globe and followed his gaze. He seemed to be focused on one town, one spot.. Was that six believers in one town? Six lights, when less than one hundred existed in the world? That must be the yeti base town, but where was it? As he looked closer, he realised with a shiver which town that was. Burgess. His home town, his birthplace.

"It's Burgess, isn't it?" he asked resigned. "Jaime and Sophie Bennett."

Pitch nodded and mounted a nightmare. He offered one to Jack, but Jack shook his head. He had his staff now. He could fly, ride the wind as he had in the past. His powers might not be what they were in the past, but they were still spirit powers. He wasn't going to give them up or leave his staff behind.

The wind rose at Jack's back as he willed it. It was as strong as it normally was, slightly stronger even, but it seemed turbulent. Reluctant to bend to his will, as it had it the past. When he hovered on it, it seemed unstable and shaky beneath him, almost as if it wished to buck him off.

Jack tried to ignore it as he forced himself upwards. It hurt though. In all those years of being unseen, the wind had been his one companion. Unseen like himself, his friend, his helper, the one that had allowed him to see the world from up high, let him bring down snow from the sky in blizzards. It had been faithful to him. Now it seemed more his unwilling servant than friend.

He didn't need it though, he promised himself. He didn't need an unseen companion who was never able to talk to him. He didn't need the wind's help to soar over the world, and his ability to call blizzards was already pretty much gone, unless he wanted a storm of ice and nightmares. He had Pitch now, the Nightmare King, his ally who wanted to help him. He could sail over the world on the back of a nightmare, he could talk to Pitch, Pitch was there for him when he needed it.

He pushed the wind into a funnel and propelled himself after Pitch, the cool night air stinging his face. He flew alongside Pitch on the nightmare, faster and faster until he pulled ahead. He heard Pitch laugh in the distance as the nightmare sped up, galloping through the air towards him.

"Eager, aren't we?" Pitch said, a laugh filling the night and causing Jack's heart to miss a beat. "So which lucky child will have the privilege of being the first for you to test your new powers on?"

Jack knew which child it would be. It would be the child who had pushed him away from the guardians and his past and towards Pitch, the one who had set the whole series of events into motion. The child who shouldn't have been there, the one little child who ruined Easter.

"Sophie Bennett," he declared.


End file.
